This new study is out of Sweden. The potential disease-inducing soft drink dose was 400 ml or 13.5 fl oz per day. In the U.S., a typical soda can is 10 fl oz or 355 ml. Surprisingly, artificially-sweetened soft drinks were just as guilty as regular beverages.

The team analyzed the self-reported dietary data of each adult, looking specifically at the number of soft drinks consumed up to 1 year before a diabetes diagnosis. Participants’ insulin resistance levels, beta cell function, and autoimmune response were also measured.

The researchers found that adults who reported drinking at least two 200-milliliter servings of soft drinks a day – whether they contained sugar or artificial sweetener – were twice as likely to develop LADA and 2.4 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, compared with those who consumed fewer than two soft drinks daily.

What is more, adults who consumed five 200-milliliter servings of soft drinks daily were found to be at 3.5 times greater risk of LADA and 10.5 times greater risk of type 2 diabetes, regardless of whether the drinks were sugary or artificially sweetened.”

The proposed mechanism for adverse metallic effects is that the sweeteners alter the mix of germs that live in our intestines. That alteration in turn causes the overweight and obesity. See MedPageToday for the complicated details. The first part of the article is about mice; humans are at the end.

The researchers further suggested that these individualized nutritional responses may be driven by personalized functional differences in the micro biome [intestinal germs or bacteria].

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Diabetes researcher Robert Rizza, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who was not involved with the research, called the findings “fascinating.”

He noted that earlier research suggests people who eat large amounts of artificial sweeteners have higher incidences of obesity and diabetes. The new research, he said, suggests there may be a causal link.

“This was a very thorough and carefully done study, and I think the message to people who use artificial sweeteners is they need to use them in moderation,” he said. “Drinking 17 diet sodas a day is probably a bad idea, but one or two may be OK.”

I won’t argue with that last sentence!

Finally, be aware the several clinical studies show no linkage between human consumption of non-caloric artificial sweeteners and overweight, obesity, and T2 diabetes.

Posted onJuly 20, 2014|Comments Off on Advantame: A New Sugar Substitute

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this last spring approved a new artificial sweetener called advantame. The press release calls it a high-intensity sweetener, which is a new term for me. Advantame joins five other artificial sweeteners: saccharin (e.g., Sweet’N Low), aspartame (Equal and others), acesulfame potassium (Sweet One and others), sucralose (Splenda), and neotame (Newtame).

From the FDA:

High-intensity sweeteners, such as advantame, may be used in place of sugar for a number of reasons, including that they do not contribute calories or only contribute a few calories to the diet. High-intensity sweeteners also generally will not raise blood sugar levels.

Advantame is a free-flowing, water soluble, white crystalline powder that is stable even at higher temperatures, and can be used as a tabletop sweetener as well as in cooking applications. Advantame has been approved for use as a general-purpose sweetener and flavor enhancer and can be used in baked goods, non-alcoholic beverages (including soft drinks), chewing gum, confections and frostings, frozen desserts, gelatins and puddings, jams and jellies, processed fruits and fruit juices, toppings, and syrups.

As badly as stevia needs the soft-drink companies, the soft-drink companies may need stevia even more. While sweetened carbonated beverages still make up around one-fifth of all the liquids we consume, the volume sold has dropped, per capita, every year since 1998. We’re more afraid of sugar than we’ve ever been. What yesterday were seen as “empty calories” have today been designated “toxic.” Doctors warn that cans of soda put fat into your liver, weaken your response to insulin and increase your risk of heart disease and diabetes. The panic over sugar has grown so pervasive that other dietary boogeymen — salt and fat and gluten — seem like harmless flunkies in comparison. (In 2012, when the market-research firm Mintel asked consumers which ingredients or foods they were trying to avoid, sugar and added sugar topped the list, by a wide margin.)

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Some consumers also wonder if the natural sweeteners aren’t simply different flavors of the products they’ve been trying to avoid. At the beginning of July, just as PepsiCo got approval for Reb-D and Coca-Cola said it would be working on Reb-X, a 58-year-old woman living in Hawaii filed suit against Big Stevia. In March she bought a box of Truvia at Walmart because she thought it was a natural product. Now she’s convinced it’s no such thing. Her complaint declared that “Reb-A is not the natural crude preparation of stevia,” and that its manufacture is not “similar to making tea,” as Cargill’s packaging suggests. Rather, it’s “a highly chemically processed and purified form of stevia-leaf extract.”

Hers was not the only attack on Cargill’s natural sweetener. In ongoing negotiations to settle a similar suit, Cargill has offered to remove the phrase “similar to making tea” from the packaging and/or add an asterisk to the product’s tagline, “Nature’s Calorie-Free Sweetener,” directing people to a website F.A.Q. That page would explain that Truvia contains very little stevia, by weight, and that its main ingredient — erythritol — comes from yeast that may be fed with genetically modified corn sugar. “As with almost all finished food products,” the F.A.Q. would say, “the journey from field to table involves some processing.”

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But what’s “natural” mean anyway?

It’s a question that has bedeviled beverage-makers, too. In the fall of 2012, a German food company surveyed 4,000 people in eight European countries, to find out how they understood the “natural” claim. Almost three-quarters said they thought that natural products were more healthful and that they’d pay a premium to get them. More than half argued that natural products have a better taste. But the respondents weren’t sure what degree or form of processing would be enough to strip a product of its natural status. Some drew a line between sea salt (natural) and table salt (artificial). Others did the same for dried pasta and powdered milk, though both are made by dehydration.